I focus on using the Internet, Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Gamification, and Social Media to grow business. I'm also an American who cares enough to speak up and a serial entrepreneur with a short attention span, so I need things to work really fast.

I am the President and Founder of InsideSales.com, the leading sales automation platform for inside sales professionals that I started with Dave Elkington, the other Founder and our amazing CEO, in 2004.

I speak at industry events, research industry topics, and my blog ranks first on ‘inside sales’ where I spend my time giving away (almost) all of our trade secrets www.KenKrogue.com.

Email me at kk@insidesales.com, connect on LinkedIn, follow me on Twitter, or best all, Circle me to access my latest stuff and quick summaries on Google+.

Social Nurturing: 7 Keys To Acquire Contacts Through LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook And Google+

How do you get to know influential people using social media? We have developed a very powerful new model that does this very thing and brings amazing results, we use it at InsideSales.com.

We call it Social Nurturing. – Ken

Social Nurturing helps you get to know influential people using LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

Is Social Nurturing just for prospecting or sales?

No.

It is a useful model whenever you want to get to know influential people whether they be entrepreneurial gurus, prospects for your business, influencers in your industry, partners in a business channel, readers on a blog or column, friends in the ‘cool’ clique at school, potential employers, or just followers on social media.

Is Social Nurturing the same as Lead Nurturing?

No.

It comes before lead nurturing, and by definition, uses social media only.

Lead Nurturing is the process of progressing interest into need, or leads into qualified prospects.

So what comes before interest?

Think about it, there are several stages somebody goes through before they are interested in you, what you do, or what you have to offer. Social media offers tools and access to people like never before in the history of the world.

Qualify: You need to decide if it is worth building a relationship with them.

Understanding: They need enough information to know roughly what you do.

Interest: What you do must be intriguing to them.

Relevance: Both parties should have meaningful value for each other.

Entertain: They need to be willing to spend time to see where this relationship can go, and you need to make it fun, interesting, and compelling enough to do so.

We call this process Social Nurturing. And there are three best practices I’ll reveal later (when we have polished and tested them) that really make the ACQUIRE model work.

Social Nurturing is a cool phrase that Thomas Oldroyd on our team here at InsideSales.com coined to describe that process that sits in front of Lead Nurturing and uses social media to turn awareness into interest.

How do you actually use the ACQUIRE model to make influential contacts using social media?

We have lots of ideas and testing in process (in other words, this is so new we are still learning.) We have had absolutely incredible results so far. For example, we were able to use the ACQUIRE model in September to set appointments with 1230 people who were going to be at a trade show in San Francisco to come and meet with us at the show (we did it before the show even began.)

For perspective, years past with traditional methods we had around 50 pre-set appointments at the same show.

My Forbes readers may want to reserve a seat for my webinar tomorrow where I’m sharing our first findings. Then my team is putting it into a downloadable eBook in a few weeks you will have access to also. The price of admission is your feedback and comments as you try it yourself personally and in your business.

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Great article with good information. Thanks a lot for some more great tips.

I remember you mentioning, during a presentation you were giving, joking with a friend about finding a purpose for twitter among all these social connecting sites… Looks like you have found that purpose.

What a great article, and kudos for being so candid and forthcoming about the details of how these programs have been working for you. We’ll definitely study every one of the steps in detail. Thank you, Ken!

Very good comparison of interest vs. need with the car lot analogy, Ken. Most companies waste a significant amount of time with people who are just interested. Every company should be constantly evaluating how they can spend less time selling to people who are interested and instead educate them until there’s a need. Thanks for the very poignant reminder of this very simple yet very important principle.

You had me at “Education.” I’ve been the victim of nurturing campaigns that go something like this: “Are you ready to buy it now?” “Are you ready to buy it now?” “Are you ready to buy it now?” “Are you ready to buy it now?” …etc. I think it is critical to be clear that nurturing from interest to need requires education about the industry, processes, and best practices, not mere reiterations of product features, benefits, and impacts (or advantages, differentiation, and so on).